I had been convinced that it’s Turkey’s carpet dealers (root: vermin … c.1300, "noxious animals," from Anglo-Fr. and O.Fr. vermin, from V.L. *verminum "vermin," possibly including bothersome insects, collective noun formed from L. vermis "worm". Extended to "low, obnoxious people" by 1562.) who have given leeches, snakes, roaches and rats their bad name. They’re even quicker at provoking mistrust and cynicism than your average politician.
At least these were the modest conclusions I had come to after weeks of strolling the streets of many Turkish cities, especially the narrow, inescapable laneways and passageways of Istanbul’s Sultanahmet district.
And then – feeling trepidation, wary – we met Mehmet, the carpet dealer.
Perhaps it was being surrounded – as you are in many carpet shops – by those warm earth tones in his showroom, spread across the floors, up the walls, layered and piled in each corner, every imaginable design so tastefully framed within the edges of each carpet, the visual and story-telling traditions of ages but made beautiful by each woman artisan at her loom, the carefully focused carpet gallery lights now bringing alive the diamonds, hexagons, prayer arches, abstracted leafs and scorpions and wolf’s mouth in their many reds, ochres, yellows, creams, ambers, blues and greens.
Perhaps it was that no one, ever, seemed at all eager to actually sell us a carpet at Mehmet’s. Perhaps it was Mehmet’s own patient manner, his soft but clear voice, his many digressions into personal tales, his self-consciousness over his French-Turkish English ("My English, you know …. Can you understand?"). Perhaps it was the sensation of comfortably wandering with him, curiosity heightened, through the old exoticism of the lands and traditions bound up with carpet weaving. Perhaps it was how, down on hands and knees, he would examine the weave of a particular carpet, wonder at the dyes, look at the maker’s label, tell what he could about its probable making, all with a quality of thoughtfulness, interest, even tenderness that made him seem almost like a brother or partner to the weaver herself.
Whatever it was, and it was at least all this, Mehmet made looking at, learning about, choosing and eventually buying a kilim a rich, complete-feeling, unforgettable experience. – Yes finally 'buying', although that element of the experience, especially the payment, signing an export form and credit card receipt, hardly seemed to resemble much that I have come to associate with 'buying'. What I mean is that although we finally left with our favourite carpet, Mehmet made it feel that he hadn’t 'sold' us anything, rather was sending it off with us, as if he had said, "Just try it out for a while back in Canada. Enjoy it. Let me know how it works. No. No. On the contrary. It’s my honour to do this."
Of course it is possible to say that we had met the most effective carpet seller in all of Turkey. Perhaps. But that’s not what either of us feel, even now, months later.
On the first visit we peel off layer upon layer from several piles of carpets, spreading six, ten, fifteen across the floor at one time, setting some aside, putting some of those ‘some’ back onto the floor then, stumbling on a new style, we begin again, then again. When we apologize for being so undecided or fickle in our tastes, Mehmet says, as he has opportunity to say many times, "No, no, it is my great pleasure to show these to you. I have so much time. Would you like a cup of tea …." An hour later, more apologies, more "It’s my great pleasure." And it’s true, he makes us feel, along the meanderings of every anecdote, memory, digression and piece of carpet lore, as if it is.
This is how it goes: - As we lay out the carpets, walk around, catch the light off the colours and designs from new angles, Mehmet tells stories about how he, although Turkish, was raised and educated in France, had had various commercial jobs, some dissatisfying, until a friend of a friend introduced him to another carpet dealer, pension owner and tour business operator who, he said, had given him "this comfortable home" to work and grow in. More kilims are laid out, we stand back, kneel down to see the weave, ask questions, then Mehmet kneels down too, bends his face to the carpet, expecting us to take a closer look as he explains a dye or fabric ("That is wool." "That could be goat or horse hair."), a knotting technique, design figure, pattern, proportions, what’s that on the border, various traditions and adaptations of these … all the time feeling the fabric, turning it over, standing back, making sure you are following his French-Turkish English, which is more considered and articulate than many people in their mother tongue … hearing along the way, as if these are more threads that must be made part of the pattern, about his month-long romance, then wedding ("Yes, so sudden," he agrees, still with a beam of infatuation on his face), then the birth of their son, he and his wife’s so far unsuccessful determination to stop smoking, his travels and long hours of work, his wife’s busy schedule as a travel agent downstairs, the difficulties of all this for the family ….
By our second visit we have narrowed our choices down to three possibilities, kilims and combinations of Persian kilims and saddlebags made by nomads, likely shepherds. "How long would this, the combination piece, take to make," we ask. "It depends. It would be worked on while the woman is settled in camp. Work might be interrupted by illness or a need for materials. Or the family is moving on. They are made gradually at different times … over time, let’s say." Later we are talking about carpet making and gender roles. "Women weave, men repair. That’s just the way it has been," Mehmet says, smiling. "But only men trade and sell," I add. "Yes, ah yes, that’s true," he agrees. Then we talk about changing gender roles in Turkey and Canada … among nurses, teachers, industrial workers. With only three carpets remaining on the floor, we agree it is late, say our goodbyes and promise to think about our choices and return in a day or two.
We’re back in a few days, setting out our choices, then I begin digging into another pile and find yet another beauty! Mehmet, wisely, leaves us to our own discussion, but he’s never far away, checking in, answering questions, telling another story, seemingly a man of immeasurable patience for the decision to happen. Finally we eliminate one, then another. Two remain. Can we afford two? Definitely not. We circle our choices again, then again. Then finally, yes! this is the one, and a very happy decision at that … a Persian kilim with saddlebag pieces woven into a end pattern made up of slightly wavy horizontal bars of deep tans, browns, reds and indigo blue. It feels alive with its own desert travels and stories, the voices that must be there in the knots and weave, the aesthetic eye watching/making the whole emerge. It reminds me of paintings I especially enjoyed in Australia (done by Helicopter Tungurrayi, raised in his nomadic Aboriginal family in the western Australian desert) … the long, narrow dune-like waves of colour seeming so rooted in a similar sense of place, created by a kindred spirit.
The decision finally made and the carpet given to a repair man to adjust the length, we take another journey that Mehmet had been promising …downstairs to one floor above an excavated tiled floor mosaic, likely from Byzantine Istanbul, perhaps 1500-1700 years old, then down another flight of stairs until we are on plexiglass a mere metre above the same mosaic, then lower still into a dank stone and brick chamber, thought to be a vaulted church or burial room off of which is a small opening into an underground cistern system (Istanbul is built over a maze of these ancient channels and cisterns) over the arch of which is the remains of a barely decipherable early Christian image of Mary painted on stone.
Then up we climb, past the mosaics, through a painting and carpet exhibition room, up through the tourist office, then out and up a wrought-iron spiral staircase to views of Asian Istanbul and the Sea of Marmara (where Mehmet discretely but quickly takes a cigarette from a brown and silver embossed case and lights up, as we talk again about the need to stop smoking), then up another staircase until we seem at the very edge of the Blue Mosque’s domes and six towering minarets, white seagulls circling around and between, others resting contentedly on the domes’ sooty cornflower slopes.
On the way down, I spot a bin of carpet patches and ask if it is possible to have a small kilim piece stitched over the logo on my shoulder bag. Of course, certainly … and right away we are rummaging through kilim scraps, the eye of the carpet repairman finding just the one and on it’s sewn, just like that. No, no, it’s our pleasure, when I insist on paying for the work.
Then we’re down another floor, and Mehmet begins the purchasing (and export) paperwork, explains how prices are established and points to an added discount because of a refundable export fee we won’t be charged. It all feels so civil, so reasonable that we find ourselves not quibbling, nor even wondering whether we’ve agreed on too high a price to begin with, all the while thinking how generously we are being treated. The act of making the actual purchase has somehow been made small, incidental, like another natural element in the surrounding flow of stories and digressions, somewhere so deep in the weave of all this that we hardly notice it.
And then there we are, with the prized little carpet now folded and safe in its own carrying case, saying our thank-you’s to Mehmet and he to us, the whole experience feeling as pleasing, colourful and complete as the carpet we carry out of his shop.
At least these were the modest conclusions I had come to after weeks of strolling the streets of many Turkish cities, especially the narrow, inescapable laneways and passageways of Istanbul’s Sultanahmet district.
And then – feeling trepidation, wary – we met Mehmet, the carpet dealer.
Perhaps it was being surrounded – as you are in many carpet shops – by those warm earth tones in his showroom, spread across the floors, up the walls, layered and piled in each corner, every imaginable design so tastefully framed within the edges of each carpet, the visual and story-telling traditions of ages but made beautiful by each woman artisan at her loom, the carefully focused carpet gallery lights now bringing alive the diamonds, hexagons, prayer arches, abstracted leafs and scorpions and wolf’s mouth in their many reds, ochres, yellows, creams, ambers, blues and greens.
Perhaps it was that no one, ever, seemed at all eager to actually sell us a carpet at Mehmet’s. Perhaps it was Mehmet’s own patient manner, his soft but clear voice, his many digressions into personal tales, his self-consciousness over his French-Turkish English ("My English, you know …. Can you understand?"). Perhaps it was the sensation of comfortably wandering with him, curiosity heightened, through the old exoticism of the lands and traditions bound up with carpet weaving. Perhaps it was how, down on hands and knees, he would examine the weave of a particular carpet, wonder at the dyes, look at the maker’s label, tell what he could about its probable making, all with a quality of thoughtfulness, interest, even tenderness that made him seem almost like a brother or partner to the weaver herself.
Whatever it was, and it was at least all this, Mehmet made looking at, learning about, choosing and eventually buying a kilim a rich, complete-feeling, unforgettable experience. – Yes finally 'buying', although that element of the experience, especially the payment, signing an export form and credit card receipt, hardly seemed to resemble much that I have come to associate with 'buying'. What I mean is that although we finally left with our favourite carpet, Mehmet made it feel that he hadn’t 'sold' us anything, rather was sending it off with us, as if he had said, "Just try it out for a while back in Canada. Enjoy it. Let me know how it works. No. No. On the contrary. It’s my honour to do this."
Of course it is possible to say that we had met the most effective carpet seller in all of Turkey. Perhaps. But that’s not what either of us feel, even now, months later.
On the first visit we peel off layer upon layer from several piles of carpets, spreading six, ten, fifteen across the floor at one time, setting some aside, putting some of those ‘some’ back onto the floor then, stumbling on a new style, we begin again, then again. When we apologize for being so undecided or fickle in our tastes, Mehmet says, as he has opportunity to say many times, "No, no, it is my great pleasure to show these to you. I have so much time. Would you like a cup of tea …." An hour later, more apologies, more "It’s my great pleasure." And it’s true, he makes us feel, along the meanderings of every anecdote, memory, digression and piece of carpet lore, as if it is.
This is how it goes: - As we lay out the carpets, walk around, catch the light off the colours and designs from new angles, Mehmet tells stories about how he, although Turkish, was raised and educated in France, had had various commercial jobs, some dissatisfying, until a friend of a friend introduced him to another carpet dealer, pension owner and tour business operator who, he said, had given him "this comfortable home" to work and grow in. More kilims are laid out, we stand back, kneel down to see the weave, ask questions, then Mehmet kneels down too, bends his face to the carpet, expecting us to take a closer look as he explains a dye or fabric ("That is wool." "That could be goat or horse hair."), a knotting technique, design figure, pattern, proportions, what’s that on the border, various traditions and adaptations of these … all the time feeling the fabric, turning it over, standing back, making sure you are following his French-Turkish English, which is more considered and articulate than many people in their mother tongue … hearing along the way, as if these are more threads that must be made part of the pattern, about his month-long romance, then wedding ("Yes, so sudden," he agrees, still with a beam of infatuation on his face), then the birth of their son, he and his wife’s so far unsuccessful determination to stop smoking, his travels and long hours of work, his wife’s busy schedule as a travel agent downstairs, the difficulties of all this for the family ….
By our second visit we have narrowed our choices down to three possibilities, kilims and combinations of Persian kilims and saddlebags made by nomads, likely shepherds. "How long would this, the combination piece, take to make," we ask. "It depends. It would be worked on while the woman is settled in camp. Work might be interrupted by illness or a need for materials. Or the family is moving on. They are made gradually at different times … over time, let’s say." Later we are talking about carpet making and gender roles. "Women weave, men repair. That’s just the way it has been," Mehmet says, smiling. "But only men trade and sell," I add. "Yes, ah yes, that’s true," he agrees. Then we talk about changing gender roles in Turkey and Canada … among nurses, teachers, industrial workers. With only three carpets remaining on the floor, we agree it is late, say our goodbyes and promise to think about our choices and return in a day or two.
We’re back in a few days, setting out our choices, then I begin digging into another pile and find yet another beauty! Mehmet, wisely, leaves us to our own discussion, but he’s never far away, checking in, answering questions, telling another story, seemingly a man of immeasurable patience for the decision to happen. Finally we eliminate one, then another. Two remain. Can we afford two? Definitely not. We circle our choices again, then again. Then finally, yes! this is the one, and a very happy decision at that … a Persian kilim with saddlebag pieces woven into a end pattern made up of slightly wavy horizontal bars of deep tans, browns, reds and indigo blue. It feels alive with its own desert travels and stories, the voices that must be there in the knots and weave, the aesthetic eye watching/making the whole emerge. It reminds me of paintings I especially enjoyed in Australia (done by Helicopter Tungurrayi, raised in his nomadic Aboriginal family in the western Australian desert) … the long, narrow dune-like waves of colour seeming so rooted in a similar sense of place, created by a kindred spirit.
The decision finally made and the carpet given to a repair man to adjust the length, we take another journey that Mehmet had been promising …downstairs to one floor above an excavated tiled floor mosaic, likely from Byzantine Istanbul, perhaps 1500-1700 years old, then down another flight of stairs until we are on plexiglass a mere metre above the same mosaic, then lower still into a dank stone and brick chamber, thought to be a vaulted church or burial room off of which is a small opening into an underground cistern system (Istanbul is built over a maze of these ancient channels and cisterns) over the arch of which is the remains of a barely decipherable early Christian image of Mary painted on stone.
Then up we climb, past the mosaics, through a painting and carpet exhibition room, up through the tourist office, then out and up a wrought-iron spiral staircase to views of Asian Istanbul and the Sea of Marmara (where Mehmet discretely but quickly takes a cigarette from a brown and silver embossed case and lights up, as we talk again about the need to stop smoking), then up another staircase until we seem at the very edge of the Blue Mosque’s domes and six towering minarets, white seagulls circling around and between, others resting contentedly on the domes’ sooty cornflower slopes.
On the way down, I spot a bin of carpet patches and ask if it is possible to have a small kilim piece stitched over the logo on my shoulder bag. Of course, certainly … and right away we are rummaging through kilim scraps, the eye of the carpet repairman finding just the one and on it’s sewn, just like that. No, no, it’s our pleasure, when I insist on paying for the work.
Then we’re down another floor, and Mehmet begins the purchasing (and export) paperwork, explains how prices are established and points to an added discount because of a refundable export fee we won’t be charged. It all feels so civil, so reasonable that we find ourselves not quibbling, nor even wondering whether we’ve agreed on too high a price to begin with, all the while thinking how generously we are being treated. The act of making the actual purchase has somehow been made small, incidental, like another natural element in the surrounding flow of stories and digressions, somewhere so deep in the weave of all this that we hardly notice it.
And then there we are, with the prized little carpet now folded and safe in its own carrying case, saying our thank-you’s to Mehmet and he to us, the whole experience feeling as pleasing, colourful and complete as the carpet we carry out of his shop.
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